FACT 1 – In 2011 the UK National Audit Office (NAO) reported that lack of programme and project management skills was one of the major concerns for senior managers.

FACT 2 – Over 250,000 people worldwide are qualified in PRINCE2® and over 50,000 in Managing Successful Programmes MSP®, but when we undertake maturity assessments and assurance reviews, we find organisations don’t actually use the fundamental concepts or processes, basically people are gaining qualifications on subject areas they don’t use.

FACT 3 – Our skills and capability assessments have also highlighted some other alarming statistics, one of which is that 23% of people involved in transformation programmes and projects have no formal qualifications.

If you are interested in more about why organisations fail to extract better value from the training market, why not read our article and paper at delivering better value from training. If you are interested in a broader perspective and wish to fully support your programme and project managers then an Academy model may be right for your organisation, an overview of the key characteristics is provided below.

Eight things that the Aspire Academy can do for you:

Corporate Development Programmes – that provide targeted development to improve organisational and individual performance in both the processes and leadership of change (including talent programmes for developing critical communities).

Competency Framework – that can be adapted for your organisation to help target your training (aligned to the APM Body of Knowledge).

Competency and Capability Assessment – the process and survey that can profile the current organisation to target your training more effectively.

Short Courses – a range of off the shelf, customisable topic and role related courses specifically targeted at improving performance. A number have associated vocational qualifications from C4CM.

I-Learning Courses – we have all the main APM Group qualification courses and a range of topic specific courses that focus on application of the concepts, for example planning. The courses are modularised into over 200 “Knowledge Nuggets”. Which are short sharp sessions covering a specific topic or technique.

Accredited Qualifications – we can offer the full range of APM, APM Group and C4CM qualifications in face to face events.

Align Framework – which provides a portfolio, programme and project framework which provides a self-help knowledge base and just in time guidance for teams. For more information on the Align Framework, click here.

Community of Practice – which will enable personal development and networking and organisational learning and improvement.

Which Agile Framework – Does it Matter? The Implications for a PMO All scaling frameworks share some common patterns: Scrum at the team level, many teams sharing the same backlog, planning done collaboratively across teams, and the general principles of pull, self-organisation and continuous improvement. What does this mean for a PMO? What are the ...

I held a careers coaching session the other day for someone looking to get into a project co-ordination role for the first time. I’m conscious that a lot of the PMO Flashmob topics and themes at events might not be newbie friendly and perhaps we should look into doing something like this in the future. ...

We’re back at Project Challenge this Spring with the usual exhibition stand with our squashy cushions and general red overload thing going on. You’re welcome to join us – just to visit the stand or grab a seat and chat to other people also attending the show. It takes place for just one day this ...

When we were looking at the PMO Trends for 2019, this subject was top of the list. There’s a very strong reason for that. Here’s what I wrote: “If you’re anything like me you’ll be fascinated by all the talk about project data analytics and what can be achieved with data science. You’re probably feeling ...

We’re back with a sponsored webinar which we think you’ll get a lot of value from. Here’s what it’s all about: How engaged is your senior executive team in the project reports you provide them? Discover how to get your execs on board by providing the information they demand in their preferred formats in Kivue’s ...